The trilogy is the best way to get and try this game right now. It is very inexpensive, and you can get all three games (Aftermath, Aftershock, and then Afterlife) for like pennies each. Which is their real value, by the way. I feel the pain of people who got these games at the regular price. The trilogy try to re-create the power struggle between a small but effective human operation and the large masses of Martians invaders. X-com was the first game introducing the concept, and if you do not know what X-com is go inform yourself because you should not be here. Let’s just say that X-com is one of the best games ever made. Period. So, a spiritual successor to the best game ever made should be good, right? Wrong, considering that the developers tried to reinvent the wheel and decided to bypass all key ingredients that made X-com great. The end result is a trilogy of games that will keep you busy, at a bargain, until the real successors of X-com (X-com form Firaxis and the indie project Xenonauts) will come along later this year.

The UFO: After... series are three games inspired by the theme and gameplay of the classic XCOM: Enemy Unknown. With this bundle you get all of them in one neat, sensibly priced package.

While there are a lot of improvements in terms of interface and graphics (obviously) die-hard fans of XCOM are likely to have some gripes with several of the changes. The two biggest ones are that combat is no longer turn based but happens in pausable real time and there is only one base. But if you just need something to bridge the time until Firaxis' new XCOM game or Goldhawk's Xenonauts are released, you can get a lot of enjoyment out of them (definitely more than out of Extraterrestrials. I'd steer clear of that one).

The series gets better in terms of what I like to call 'polish' but the atmosphere, level design and art are best in the first game and worst in the third. I'd still recommend playing through all of them at least once to experience the whole story.

I recommend players to play the game in sequence (aftermath, aftershock, afterlight in that order) so you can see the progress of both the game and the story. The tactics part of afterlight is best but in storyline it seems a bit dissociated to the main theme. I do think it is comparable with the X-COM series!

Well, still the best tribute to X-Com. More polished then the recent Extraterrestrials game, this pack will keep you busy for weeks. All of them have the familiar production/research/tactical gameplay, all in different settings (first two games in earth, last one in mars).